Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL, pronounced “smile”) allows users to develop and play back interactive, multimedia presentations. SMIL was designed to cater to a wide-range of applications. This is accomplished by a rather complicated and detailed language.
For some applications, such as applications that run on platforms that are not fully functional computers, SMIL may not be suitable. For example, a relatively new line of liquid crystal display (LCD) televisions has become available. It is possible for users to insert memory sticks and cards from such things as digital cameras and camcorders and ‘play’ their pictures on their television. Users may desire to set these to music, as well as have music from memory play on their television when no images are present. These types of platforms do not have the full functionality of a personal computer and may not be able to use a presentation in SMIL format. For purposes of the discussion here, these types of platforms will be referred to as limited resource platforms. The resources of the platform are not limited for television applications, just for auxiliary applications that are not the main purpose of the platform.
In some instances a presentation may be defined that is beyond the capability of the system. For example, a presentation in SMIL may call for two MP3 (Moving Pictures Experts Group, Layer 3) files to be played back simultaneously. A limited resource platform cannot execute this, making the presentation unexecutable on the platform.